OriginalCyn

Fighting continues in Carentan, during which several members of Easy Company are injured or killed; one member experiences shell-shock resulting in psychologically-induced blindness; Recently-promoted Captain Winters has curative powers of healing in the form of 2-minute conversations; the bromance of Winters and Nixon continues to grow.

Easy Company, along with all the other paratroopers in the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, jump into Normandy in the early morning hours of D-Day, and are in the thick of shit as the beginning of the liberation of France begins. Lt. Winter's mettle as a leader is put to the test (successfully) in the first of many battles to come.

In 1942, enlisted men arrive at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, to go through the most challenging Basic Training in the Army to become members of the 101st Airborne Division. Captain Sobel, in charge of Easy Company, is a petty tyrant of a leader, yet his often obnoxious and cruel methods of training prove fruitful in that the Men who survive it to become paratroopers in Easy Co. are arguably the best-trained unit in the 101st.

The most famous of these is probably Damian Lewis (Major Dick Winters), currently starring as Nicholas Brody in Showtime's series Homeland, as well as Soames Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga and Charlie Crews in the NBC series Life. A few others include: - Scott Grimes (Tech. Sgt. Donald Malarkey) portrayed Dr. Archie Smith on ER.. - Jamie Bamber (2nd Lt. Jack Foley) went on to play Lee Adama (Apollo) on Battlestar Galactica - Frank John Hughes (S. Sgt. William "Wild Bill" Guarnere) had roles in The Sopranos as Walden Belfiore and on 24 as Tim Woods.

Aside from typical Christmas movie favorites like A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation, our family's must-see Christmas movie is the black comedy The Ref, starring Denis Leary, Kevin Spacey, Judy Davis, and Christine Baranski:

It's also interesting that her previous dance experience was on the pole....

Meryl (and Charlie, for that matter) may have a distinct advantage from the waist-up -- posture, arm and head movement, and facial expression, but from the waist-down, it's a completely different ballgame from Ice Dance. The movements generated in the dance styles on ice require almost the opposite type of movement than dancing on a floor. Where both of them may have problems is with hip movement, especially in Latin ballroom, because they are going to have to un-learn 17 years of training and muscle memory to get the movements correct. I think Meryl has an excellent chance of winning with Maks, provided his choreography is up to snuff. Granted, I've rarely watched this show, so this is my first season watching from start to finish, but from what I've gathered, he has had issues with his partners (understatement of the year) with the exception of Melanie B in the first season. It will be interesting to see what he can do with a partner who not only understands dance, but also has the stamina and knows not only the discipline of training, is competitive by nature, and also has extensive experience with Russian coaches (Marina Zoueva and Igor Shpilband).

I figured I'd start a thread on this topic as music in ads is a big deal these days - sometimes it's an iconic pop or classic rock song that gives it new life, or it can create hit songs, launch an unknown artist into the stratosphere, and spark downloads a-plenty from iTunes. They also, unfortunately, are often atrocious, and those, all too often, wind up stuck on a mental repeat button in the brain and can make a sane person stabby in record time. I developed a seething hatred for Icona Pop's "I Don't Care (I Love It) after it was used for countless product ads as well as several promo trailers for TV shows (Rizzoli and Isles being one I can recall right off the bat). Christmas Season 2010 introduced the world to Pomplamoose, whose obnoxious renditions of Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, and Up on the Housetop to hawk Hyundai automobiles assaulted eardrums across the globe.

To embed a youtube video, just paste the link in the thread without using the "link" button -- it will automatically embed the video. I'm going to start a thread about the Music in Commercials as I've found songs in ads that I love as well as ones that make me want to gouge my ears out with a spork.

What about a thread dedicated to the music in commercials? As an example, last year that obnoxious earworm, "I Don't Care, I Love it" by Icona Pop ended up in several ads and was a popular topic of snarking/bitching/rage.

Definitely a refugee from TWoP (my Intro is on page 40 in that thread). I guess we're all in that stumbling around stage and getting a feel for how things will function here (so far I'm really enjoying it). Right there with you on the PM'ing thing as I was hunting for how to do that earlier today and came up fruitless. There absolutely were too many commercial threads over there, but some ad types definitely needed their own category.

Thanks for replying so quickly about this -- I would hate to screw up on my first day here. BTW, I love the way y'all have the forums set up. Your presence was greatly missed when y'all left TWoP -- that place went downhill following the exodus of so many of the original recappers/admins.

One of my all-time favorite commercials aired in Europe - no way would it make it past the censors here in the US:

Ah....TWoP had a thread that was kid-specific, which I spent way more time in than I care to admit. Admins, please lock the Annoying Kids thread.

PML -- I just posted in that thread that I started this one as there are so many obnoxious little snowflakes in ads these days, they deserve their own thread. Nellie Oleson was absolutely endearing compared to this demon-spawn -- for me, Nelly fell into the "Love to Hate" category. Have you ever seen Alison Arngrim's stage show, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated? I think it may be on youtube, but she makes light of the character she portrayed on LHOTP, and it's fucking hilarious.

I started a thread specifically to bitch about kids in commercials, and this little brat, along with Strudel Boy, are my top candidates for Annoying Brats of the Year. Same here, though I did have one child before getting it done. One was definitely enough -- any more, and I'd have needed to be put on a Thorazine drip.

Child actors in commercials are usually hit-or-miss -- they're usually either adorably endearing or annoying to the point of rage-inducing irritation. My current nominees for Obnoxious Brats in Ads are, as noted in the title thread, - the Strudel Boy (for Pillsbury's Toaster Strudel) He has one of the worst faux-German accents to hit the small screen in years -- when he breaks into that "Toaster Strudel, Ja?" I'm tempted to put a brick through the TV. Also irritating is that strudel is an Austrian pastry, yet they have the kid decked out in lederhosen and looking like an escapee from a Biergarten at Oktoberfest. - Cawowine, the cloying granddaughter of the Creepy E-Harmony dude. This little brat could easily play the starring role of Rhoda in a remake of The Bad Seed. In what universe did the producers of this shitty commercial think that giving her a fake speech impediment was a good idea? She can't pronounce an "R" to save her life during the majority of her advertising spiel, yet she nails "I improvised" with better diction than a lot of adults. Also, what in blue fuck was this elementary-school-aged kid doing talking with her teacher about his lovelife?!

Television is inundated with trailers for the latest Hollywood-Hyped blockbuster hopeful and/or "New Hit Show!" bullshit to the point that one of two things usually happens - either a seething hatred develops for them prior to the release date or premiere, or they develop an Über-Brigade of Fandom that can drive non-fans to the brink of insanity. Bitch or Rave about them here!!

Starting this thread as I'm hoping there are others who enjoy it as much as I do. I fell in love with figure skating the first time I watched it, which was the Innsbruck Olympics in 1976, most famously remembered in the USA when Dorothy Hamill won the Gold Medal in the Ladies event and her now-immortalized haircut. While I was impressed with watching her, what got me hooked on this sport wasn't watching her skate. Our new neighbors had moved here from Canada, and while I was at their house playing with their son, his mother was watching the Men's competition. , and while we were futzing around with Legos, I happened to glance at the TV. At that point of my life, I was heavily involved in ballet, and to this day I can still recall that moment -- even though I knew nothing about ice skating, I felt an absolute thrill through my body as I could tell that what I was watching was something extremely special. The skater, I now know, was the amazing John Curry. I'd never heard of him before, but as my fandom of figure skating grew, I learned just how exquisite of a skater he was and the huge impact he had on the sport. From that moment, I was addicted to watching it whenever it was on TV. Back in the 1994, the "whack on the knee," and then the tragic and untimely death of Pairs skater Sergei Grinkov in 1995, generated immense interest in the sport here in America, but now, following the retirement of Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen, which resulted in the end of American dominance in the Ladies' discipline, television coverage in the US has all but evaporated, with the Winter Olympics games being the exception. For some ungodly reason, the Idiots In Charge of programming seem to think that the other three disciplines are irrelevant and have been treated like red-headed stepchildren, especially after ABC's contract with the ISU ended and NBC took over. It's a cryin'-ass shame, because WRT American skaters, there have been absolutely stellar athletes in Mens and Ice Dance (sadly, not so much where Pairs are concerned). During the run up to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, the mainstream Sports coverage treated Evan Lysacek was like an afterthought even after winning the Mens event at the 2009 World Championships - the first Gold Medal for the US since Brian Boitano back in 1988 - and Johnny Weir was known by the American public more for his outrageous persona than for his gorgeous skating. Thanks to Ice Network and the ability to watch Eurosport and other European and Asian countries' TV coverage via live streams on the Internet, it's now possible to watch competitions in their entirety rather than the limited, US-centric broadcast, made even worse thanks to the Three Stooges that NBC insists on foisting on viewers, namely 1) Scott Hamilton, who screeches like he's passing a kidney stone each time a skater does a jump, 2) Sandra Bezic, who brings less than nothing to the table as an analyst, and 3) the utterly worthless Tom Hammond, who wears more makeup than a drag queen and whose "color commentary" consists of nattering on about shit that no one I've ever talked to gives a flying fuck to learn. n7 It never ceases to amaze me that whenever the issue of the declining popularity of figure skating in the US comes up, TPTB always claim that casual viewers don't/can't understand the "new" judging system (that's now been in place for over a decade) and use that "reasoning" to justify the limited amount time allotted to the broadcasting of competitions as well as airing them one to two weeks after the event has taken place (case in point: Grand Prix coverage for the past 6 years). Call me kooky, but it seems to me that during a skater's performance of a program, it would make sense to have the commentators give a detailed explanation, as each element is executed, of the Level and GOE (Grade of Execution) it is likely to receive. Instead, the Three Stooges blather throughout performances about crap that is completely irrelevant to what's taking place on the ice, such as a skater's hobbies, his or her high school or college GPA, favorite food(s), their parents' occupations -- I mean, seriously, NBC? Buy a goddamn clue. With 1) Meryl Davis and Charlie White making history by winning the first US Gold Medal in Ice Dance (which, to give credit where it's due, did get decent coverage during the Sochi Games), the many interviews and appearances on talk shows that resulted from it, capitalizing on their post-Olympic popularity by competing on DWTS, 2) Gracie Gold, Ashley Wagner, and Polina Edmunds looking like they will likely be legitimate podium contenders in the next quad and at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, and 3) the unexpected yet well-deserved popularity of Jason Brown following Boston Nationals this past January, there may be a glimmer of hope that figure skating can reclaim the popularity it once held in the US. Now that I got that rant out of my system, lol.......the World Championships, held in Japan, ended yesterday......So much to talk about!! Among other things: - A new Ice Dance Champion for the first time in four years; - Jeremy Abbott's Redemption (in more ways than one :P ); - The Battle Between Machida and Hanyu (and Hanyu doing what hasn't been done since Yagudin in 2002); - Ashley, Polina, and Gracie; - Savchenko and Szolkovy winning Number Five; - Iliynkh and Katsalopov snatching defeat from the jaws of victory yet again, Weaver and Poje's rise as Canada's new #1 Ice Dance team, and Cappellini and Lanotte becoming the most unexpected of World Champions; - the entire Ladies' Podium winning on the strength of their Short Programs; ...and so much more!! Also, in other news, there's I/K splitting up, Aliona Savchenko taking a new partner starting next season, the blatant bullshit PCS judging since the start of 2014, and lastly, Speedy's plan to try and eliminate Short Programs (just how much more can he do to try and destroy the sport before he steps down as ISU President?!). - So much to discuss and snark about!!